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In 2007, China imported 8.47 million tons of pulp, an increase of 6.5 per cent over 2006, Xinhua reports. The cost was US$5.5 billion, an increase of 26.3 per cent over 2006. The average cost of the pulp was US$655 per ton.(more…)

Oji Paper has started building a pulp and paper project in Nantong, in China’s Jiangsu Province, reports China Knowledge. Oji Paper has set up a joint venture with Nantong Economic & Technological Development Zone Corp. Oji Paper hold 90% in the joint venture company which is called Jiangsu Oji Paper Co. Ltd.(more…)

Sorry about stating the blinding obvious, but Asia Pulp and Paper is still destroying forests to feed its pulp mills. WWF put out a report in July 2006 which states that APP is responsible for 80,000 hectares forest loss every year. Nazir Foead, WWF-Indonesia’s Director of Policy and Corporate Engagement says, “We estimate that around 450,000 hectares of natural forests have been cleared over the past five years to supply APP’s pulp mill in Riau.”

Oji Paper, one of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, is moving into the Mekong Region. Oji Paper has established large-scale industrial tree plantation projects in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Here and elsewhere in the world the results are deforestation and destroyed livelihoods as the company replaces villagers’ forest and common land with its monocultures.

A few months ago I wrote an article for the World Rainforest Movement announcing a new WRM report about tree plantations in Cambodia. The article looks at how aid agencies give hundreds of million of dollars every year to Cambodia. Every year they go through the ritual of asking the Hun Sen government not to trash the forests, to respect human rights and generally be a decent sort of chap. Hun Sen always agrees and the aid agencies hand over the cash.

In the first six months of 2006, China imported 3.28 million tonnes of pulp. In 2004, China overtook the USA as the biggest importer of pulp. China has long been the biggest importer of waste paper, importing 16 million tonnes in 2005.

Stora Enso plans to increase its area of plantations in China to 160,000 hectares by 2010, according to a report by Bloomberg. Stora Enso currently has 60,000 hectares of plantations in Guangxi in the south of China.

In February 2006, Anglo American announced that Mondi is considering a US$1.5 billion, one million t/yr expansion of its pulp mill at its Syktyvkar site in the Komi Republic, northwest Russia. Mondi plans to sell most of the pulp to China.

In April 2006, waste water from two paper mills in Inner Mongolia spilled out of containment ponds and flooded the village of Sugai. Villagers were forced to leave their homes. “The smell made me want to vomit,” one villager told New York Times reporter Jim Yardley.